"Bamboozle"
originally a slang or cant word, perhaps Scottish
from bombaze: "perplex,"
or Fr. embabuiner: "to make a fool
(baboon) of" (Online Etymology Dictionary);
"to deceive or get the better of (someone) by
trickery, flattery, or the like; hoodwink;
to practice trickery or deception (Random House Dictionary).
This Blog is one citizen's attempt to speak forthrightly
and to question those who
would bombastically deceive
and mislead the public.

Publius Speaks

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Saturday, February 4, 2017

UNFAVORABLE FORECAST ⛈

On February
3, 2017, at about 4:00 p.m. PST, federal court Judge James Robar of
Spokane, Washington (appointed by George W. Bush) issued a crushing judgment and
immediate nationwide temporary stay (stop) on Trump’s Executive Order banning
residents of seven Islamic nations from traveling to or entering our
country. With the Judge’s ruling, all visa
holders from those nations can enter U.S. without being interrogated or
harassed. Secretly, while the issue of
the travel ban was being decided by the Court, it was widely reported that the
Trump administration began to cancel between 60,000 to 100,000 visas from
travelers, and had already detained at least 109 travelers at airports around the
country.

It has been claimed
by some constitutional scholars and experts (like Lawrence Tribe of Harvard
Law) that what happened in the Judicial Branch of our government
on this day may have lasting effects on our governance, including:

1)
affirmation of an important role of the states as defenders of the
Constitution;

2)
affirmation of the constitutional principle of checks and balances between three
co-equal branches of the national government;

3)
affirmation of the constitutional principles of the establishment clause, the
due process provision and the importance of the states as partners in our
form of government.

We can place some hope in such outcomes, even
though the Trump administration has indicated an appeal will be forthcoming. As I have previously warned and averred, however,
this Trump administration, because of the authoritarian and narcissistic bent
of its leader, is a threat to our democratic principles and to our constitutional
structure of government. Please bear
with me as I review some of those past statements and predictions as they begin
to play out, even though this administration is only two weeks-old!

This Republican President and
Congress, working together, “will act almost immediately⛈ to destroy
the Affordable Care Act law by legislation...
attempting through the court system to destroy the subsidy provisions of
the Law in order to gut its intended purpose of aiding those who could not
afford health insurance. This will mean higher premiums for all of
us because we will be right back to where we were before
"Obamacare" -- subsidizing the big health insurance
companies by paying more (for ourselves and others) and receiving
less in health coverage.” (9/21/2015)

Not much more need be said, except to remind ourselves that
the Trump administration has adroitly taken the spotlight off this debacle and
placed it upon immigration stoppage for Muslims, Iran and the Supreme Court
nominee. Meanwhile, the awful prospect
of repeal of the ACA will become reality without an adequate replacement plan,
leaving tens of thousands of people without adequate coverage, and the rest of
us wondering how large a penalty we will pay for this chaotic approach to
health care insurance as well as health care distribution and administration. Your guess is as good as mine!

⛈“The Iran agreement will be scuttled; sanctions will be restored;
armaments and other military supports will be increased to Israel, and oil
fields and refineries will again be targets. There will be another War in
the Middle East within the first two years of the first term of (this)
President, meaning gas prices at the pump will soar; military spending
particularly on private contracts will escalate, and the citizenry will
once again suffer the effects of a war economy with private enterprise
profiting while the poor and the middle-class suffer the same old wage
cuts; slowed economy generally (although not so for defense-related
industries).”

I don’t know about you, but I think these predictions are
awfully close to what is now happening in the Trump administration: Iran has been officially “put on notice”
about their behaviors toward the USA (another detaining of seamen precipitated
this Executive Order), even though it was done in such a haphazard way that,
according to media reports, not even the military command structure knew much
about it nor did they have any orders as to actions they should take. Worse, there has been no definition of the
meaning of the phrase: “put on notice.”

So, we await further developments with great uneasiness, not
made better by the flawed attack of Special Ops in Yemen, again constructed
haphazardly (over dinner with political advisors) with no input or knowledge on
the part of expert individuals and relevant departments within the federal
government. It seems more than likely that some kind of military action toward
Iran will be “trotted out” before Trump’s first two years in office are past.

The recent National Prayer
Breakfast in Washington DC produced another revelation about the intent of
the Trump administration, about which intent I wrote on September 21, 2015. At the traditional breakfast, Trump
said: “It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said, the God
who gave us life, gave us liberty. Jefferson asked, can the liberties of a
nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the
gift of God. Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own
beliefs. That is why I will⛈ get rid
of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our
representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I
will do that, remember.”

The Johnson Amendment sponsored by
Lyndon Johnson is “a law
that bars non-profit organizations, including churches, from endorsing and
raising money for political candidates. If repealed by Congress, it would blur
the lines between church and state.” (alternet.org)

I wrote about this intent of his – now a promise – on September
21, 2015:

Beware the “forcing of Christian evangelical religion upon
every American by various and nefarious government-backed schemes such as
displaying the Ten Commandments on public property, requiring prayer in schools
or influencing the curricula of public schools at all levels.
Using the 1st amendment to allow corporations to use religious belief as a
license to discriminate against gays or against women who use contraceptives or...
perhaps against anyone who had an abortion; how about ultimately against anyone
who believes something contrary to the vendor's beliefs?”

Trump’s message at that Prayer Breakfast was to me a chilling
reminder of my own words just quoted above, and the reality that they bring to
mind. We are talking here of the
destruction of one of our cherished principles of religious freedom: that there
be no establishment of religious belief or practice by the government. That is, Amendment #1 of the Constitution, in
its very first phrase, states unequivocally “Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion...”
That is followed by a phrase that I have argued is dependent on the
primacy of that establishment clause – “or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.”

I have maintained in
other posts on this blog (see 2/18/20123; 12/1/2013; 7/3/2014) that without the
establishment clause, free exercise of religion is in danger of usurpation by government-established
religion at any time. In fact, I have
specifically cited government actions in opposition to Roe v. Wade as an
example of a religious moral doctrine (believed by some, notably the Roman
Catholic Church and many evangelical churches) as a government-directive
imposed on all, thus establishing one religious doctrine as official government
policy. This is an abominable practice
in a nation where the non-establishment of any one religion or religious belief
has been cherished as the very hall mark of freedom to worship and to believe
according to one’s own inner convictions, not those imposed by government
sanctions.

And further, I have argued against the radical Republican
concept of allowing individual business owners an exemption from certain laws
on the basis of their religious beliefs (mainly about contraception or about
sexual orientation); a basic “trumping” the law of the land and the
establishment clause of the 1st Amendment. We are on the verge of an assault on separation of church and
state.

We are also on the verge of another
tendency that I mentioned in that 2015 Blog:

4. “We will be facing ⛈a huge build-up of military forces
and armaments under a radical Republican take-over. While these
statements reflect the tendency of Republican administrations to emphasize
military build-up so that private investors, rich corporations and private
contractors can be assured of some lucrative government contracts and
government money to be had in all military-related enterprises, the outcome for
the United States will be an increasing national debt, and a militarization
that is nothing more than a symbol of "mightiness." It will not
produce the kind of efficient and effective forces that can counter radical
Jihadists or radical insurgents. The build-up will simply satisfy the
hawkish tendencies of politicians (and of some wealthy corporation heads) born
in another century, and remembering great victories in all-out world
wars. There are no such great victories in modern warfare -- everybody
loses.”

Another Trump Executive Order has begun the process toward
that military build-up, and the consequences of that will be to our detriment,
not to our glory. Let us quickly count
some of the ways:

·More lucrative
contracts for big corporations that produce military or closely-related products or services

·Threats against
USA escalate on part of rivals because of our claim to being #1 in military
might (everyone wants to topple the “King of the Hill”)

·Tax increases to
cover the costs – up, up and awaaaaaay!

·The more emphasis
on military might the greater prospect for war

·The national debt
increases by largest percentage in history

·Your pocketbook
begins to suffer the effects of higher prices, higher taxes stagnant wages, and
austerity budgets at all levels of government

Finally, let us call out one last strategy that
we too often minimize, but which the Nazi’s in the 1930’s used to their
great advantage: the lack of will on the part of the People. I put it this way in a posting of
November 15, 2015:

“Perhaps worst of all was the ability of the Nazis
to take over the towns and the nation because of something they helped to
create in the hearts and minds of the people: a moral numbness that
failed to see how much they had strayed from the ideals of their... heritage. The
promotion of unquestioning patriotism --or rather of misplaced patriotism -- is
a force that is invasive and destructive. In touting American
“exceptionalism” no matter the realities of our national life, is to numb us to
realities that are destructive of our ideals and of our true patriotism.
We cannot and must not buy in to a cheap and ugly nationalism that makes
excuses for educational, social and moral failures while celebrating militarism
and mediocrity; that denies reality and settles for standards that denigrate
our own heritage.”

We have before us now, not so much a misplaced
emphasis on patriotism, but a misplaced emphasis on nationalism; on an America
First, America Best, America the Tough and Mightiest! One commentator has called it the Nationalist
White Christian Movement, although that may be too bland.

There can be little doubt that we have entered a
newer, coarser, more ethically-challenged era than previously known. It is not just that we have fallen prey to a
patriotism that automatically denigrates every other country on the planet; we
have fallen victim to a moral numbness that sets lower and lower standards for
what is acceptable and worthy of emulation and which involves some sacrifices on
behalf of others who need help. Moral
numbness is a state of being that robs a country of greatness, and opens it up
to the inculcation of beliefs and behaviors that do more harm to individuals
and institutions than one can imagine.
Undermining the functions of a benevolent and caring government,
promoting might over right, isolating ourselves from other nations and cultures, accepting the
dubious notion that we can’t “change city hall” or “I don’t get involved in
politics” or “I haven’t got time to get involved in your cause – I’ve got
enough on my plate” – are all invitations to a morally and politically-flawed
nation. Non-voting, non-involvement,
undermining of rights, freedoms and equal justice, non-thinking commitment to
an authoritarian leader who will “fix” everything are all signs of that moral
numbness.

In my opinion, this welcome opinion from Judge Robar will
not deter the Trump administration from attempting further attacks on our
governing principles, on organizations who oppose their ideology, on federally-dependent
institutions (like public schools) that are supported by federal grants and
subsidies, and on individuals who protest and resist their anti-democratic
behaviors and actions.

It is the Trump mission, I believe, to destroy certain
constitutional principles and provisions so that our form of governance will be
forever changed from a representative democracy overseen by a national government
dependent on three co-equal branches with checks and balances, to a central
government overseen and operated by a much stronger authoritarian Executive targeted
toward a limited agenda of military might, foreign domination and “deal-making”:
privatization of functions including reversion to private charities and
organizations as the mainstay of meeting special and national needs; premiere support
for business enterprises, collection of taxes from the lower and middle classes
with tax extraction enhanced for all those of wealth, cabinet departments that
concentrate mainly on Law & Order, with little regard for consumer rights,
minority rights and government “social insurance” for persons with special
needs and challenges, plus an overarching dedication to non-regulation of the private
sector. Many functions and programs will be
administered and overseen by states with minimal interference and support from
the federal government.

Fortunately, we have now begun to see a🔆Movement of
the People🔆 toward spirited resistance to this insane bigoted and empty nationalism;
this might-makes-right, misogynistic, homophobic, and unappealing behavior that
undermines our moral foundations of freedom, equality, justice and opportunity
for all. That People’s Resistance Movement
must grow; more must join. It cannot
stop because if it does we will awaken to a reality that we never thought possible:
a dead democracy. A unique system of
governance killed-off by our own apathy, moral numbness and refusal to face the
facts of an abnormal, unprincipled leader and a grotesque Alt Right-wing Party
that refused to speak out, to act boldly and to overturn an authoritarian
Fuhrer-type regime. Let us never forget their perfidy at this crucial time in
our history when the Judiciary has stepped-up perhaps to save our
constitutional democracy and our moral obligations to each other and to the
world.